Memoirs and Correspondence of
Sir Robert Murray Keith, K.B.Edited by Mrs. Gillespie Smith

I came across this article
about the 2 volume publication about this Significant Scot. I also
found a pdf version of the publication and so all is provided here in pdf
format.

PREFACE TO THE PUBLICATION

The motives which have given
birth to the following publication, are such, as it is believed may enlist
the sympathies, if not challenge the approbation, of the reader. There are,
in the annals of every family, any of whose members have filled conspicuous
stations in the public service—some privileged epochs round which its own
memories have been fondly taught to congregate, and which it would fain
rescue from oblivion in those of others. Such, during the long diplomatic
career of Sir Robert Murray Keith, was the episode of the revolution in
Denmark in 1772; and his spirited rescue, as representative of Great
Britain, of a "daughter of England,” and the sister of his sovereign, from a
fate the least disastrous probable issue of which was imprisonment for life
in a northern fortress.

The omission—probably from prudential motives—of this most critical and
important interposition, in a foreign work of fiction, recently translated,
and introduced to the British public under the attractive title of the
“Queen of Denmark,” (an omission which the present editor may be pardoned
for ranking with that of the “part of Hamlet,” from another Danish tragedy)
naturally led to a search into those family archives where reposed the
familiar letters and official correspondence penned during the events
themselves, and so honourable alike to the character, the feelings, and the
fame of him by whom they were written and received.

To weave these valuable and hitherto inedited documents into a slight record
of the charms, the sorrows, and the injuries of the British Princess, to
whom (in his own striking words) it was a "proud commencement for the
Envoy’s chivalry to convey, through the vaulted entrance of Hamlet’s castle,
the welcome tidings of fraternal affection and liberty restored,” was felt
to be alike a duty and a pleasure. To this, the following sheets would have
been exclusively limited, had not the reputation of Sir R. M. Keith for
political sagacity, on the one hand, and wit and bonhommie on the other,
suggested, on high literary authorities, the propriety of a more extensive
selection from his twenty years’ correspondence, while a resident at other
foreign courts, than had been originally designed.

This enlarged plan, resulting in a copious melange of the grave and the gay,
unique perhaps in diplomatic life, and probably, on that account, more
likely to find acceptance with the general reader—has seemed to justify, if
not to render necessary, a more detailed account of the writer’s family than
would have served to introduce the letters from Denmark; as well as a review
of the circumstances by which his character was fashioned, and its rare
combination of soldier frankness, and courtier-like refinement, of political
acumen, and domestic playfulness, developed and matured.

Should the indulgent reader, in tracing, as drawn by his own hand, the
lineaments of one whom the same process has enabled a relative, early
deprived of his society by death, for the first time to comprehend and
appreciate—in any measure share her impressions—the dutiful labour of love
of the Editor will have reaped its rich reward.

To the merely political reader, some apology may appear necessary, for the
paucity of what the sated Envoy so often turns from with disgust, as the
“tools of his trade ” viz., diplomatic details, during the long years
intervening between 1772 and 1789. But besides the obsoleteness at this day,
and comparative unimportance in European policy, of the events occurring at
Vienna, during that long lull, preceding an unexampled tempest—they have
been amply detailed, with copious references almost at every page to the
valuable dispatches of Sir R. M. Keith, by Archdeacon Coxe; so that to take
up the political thread where he left it, previously to the singular and
hitherto inedited negotiations at the Congress of Sistovo in 1791, has been
not only the Editor’s most eligible, but sole possible course.

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